Gail Sheehy will speak at our library’s annual celebration of books and authors on May 16. Sheehy has just released her new book Passages in Caregiving. Those of us living in the area of Eureka Springs, AR, will have an opportunity to meet Sheehy and listen to her presentation.
Have you read Sheehy’s new book already?
If not, what have you read recently about aging and its related issues? Any recommendations for the rest of us? Please share.
Women & Aging 
After listening at Books in Bloom to Sheehy talk about flying her tube feeding husband to Paris for dinner because they needed a romantic evening, I have no interest in reading her book. As a tube feeder myself, I know that even if I suggested such a thing, my husband would never go along w it. He would never ask me to watch him eat a gourmet meal that I can’t share. Nor would he allow me to make a transatlantic flight just to indulge his desire to get a little “romance” into an evening. Sheehy told this story as though it were amusing and commonplace. Maybe for her life. But it also spoke volumes about reality and sensitivity, or lack of.
Just a followup on Sheehy’s book “Passages in Caregiving; From Confusion to Confidence”. I received a Mothers Day Kindle…and am sold on downloading and reading books from the Kindle Library of Amazon. Here is a quote from Sheehy that I just read: (Speaking of her husband) “We had a wonderful life. Then, The Call. Only in retrospect did I wonder why we hadn’t talked about the inevitable: growing older. How might we face the assaults of body and mind? Who would take care of whom? How would we pay for it? Americans tend to wait until we are too old and too sick to have decent, affordable choices for care in our golden (or rusted-out) years. Planning ahead is preferable—if you can face it. If you can’t, you risk plunging into confusion in full crisis mode.”
The NBC Today Show is doing a series this week on women who are”Fifty and Loving It”. They have a focus group sharing experiences and thoughts and also some experts making comments. Although we are older than fifty, they are dealing with some of the same issues. Some are single working mothers, some just beginning to face retirement, financial and health planning as well as preparing for their kids’ college tuition needs. At every age, for sure, there are issues to deal with…not just after 60.